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"People are choosing to allow television and Electronic Arts to do all their imagining for them."
- Peter Watts
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| Probability Time Wave Tube | ||
| A device that allows the user to see every possible event. |
True genius is rare - but maybe it's better to have a great many minor tinkerers, than just one genius.
| "They had the tube then. They called it the PTW tube - Probability Time Wave. They'd been trying to make a television set that would see through walls..." "Their PTW tube caught and displayed every possibility that was ever to exist. And somewhere in that vast sweep of probability, every possible thing existed. Somewhere, the wildest dream of the wildest optimist was, and became fact." |
| Technovelgy from Elimination,
by John W. Campbell. Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1936 Additional resources -
|
The short story Elimination appears in the collection Who Goes There, published in 1948. These stories were published under the pseudonym Don A. Stuart.
See also the infinite improbability drive from Douglas Adams' 1979 novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe.
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Additional
resources:
More Ideas
and Technology from Elimination
More Ideas
and Technology by John W. Campbell
Tech news articles related to Elimination
Tech news articles related to works by John W. Campbell
Probability Time Wave Tube-related
news articles:
- LEXID Sees Through Walls To Next Apartment
- See People Through Walls
| Climate Engineering In California Could Make Europe's Heat Waves Worse |
| Textiles That Harvest Energy And Store It |
| Coin-Sized Nuclear Battery Good For 100 Years |
| The FLUTE Project - A Huge Liquid Mirror In Space |
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'The pitiless M rays pierced Earth and steel and densest concrete as if they were so much transparent glass...'
'Pina2bo would have to operate full blast for many years to put as much SO2 into the stratosphere as its namesake had done in a few minutes.'
'Nanny is different,' Tom Fields murmured... 'she's not like a machine. She's like a person.'
'We made a crude , small cell and were delighted - and, I admit, somewhat surprised - to find it worked.'
'...we've promised him a generous pension from the royalties.'
'The clothes and jewelery drew their tiny power requirements from her movements.'
'At the end of each appendage's eight fingers there are tinier appendages...'
'We want to do something to help those who are suffering from tooth loss or absence,' said lead researcher Katsu Takahashi.
